PORTABLE: THE ZAZOO-ZEY CROONER’s ANTICS. . . & Our Collective Guilt of Hypocrisy -
By ‘Tunji Ajayi
A stark illiterate rich man reportedly met his friend in a London restaurant and was exchanging greetings and banters. “It’s been a long time we have met. So happy to see you here in London”. The friend told his illiterate friend. He went on: “What type of dish do I offer you in this restaurant my good friend; local or continental? ”His illiterate friend, attempting to sound presumptuously Londonish, replied him: “Tankz yoorh. Make you no worry my friend. I don dey feed myself with varieties of dishes and menu since I come here few days ago.” We all know that a Nigerian man loves to show off while appearing larger than his frame, most especially where beautiful women are present. He is quick to flaunt his sleek car, wrist watch, dangling his expensive Thuraya IP phone, while turning his ornament-adorned neck coquettishly; twisting his legs and tapping the floor unnecessarily mainly to draw attention to his expensive shoe. His friend insisted he must host him. “Please mention your taste - local or continental dish?” the host friend requested. And the illiterate man went on: “No local or continental dish I never taste since I don come.” His host summoned the lady restaurateur, while the illiterate friend quipped: “Since you insist, and for a change, make you serve me satellite dish.” . . . Haa? “Satellite Dish” . . . A faux pas! And the whole place roared with inextinguishable laughter. What a great joke from the trove of multi-talented entertainer late Gbenga Adeboye Jengbetíèlè the great humor merchant.
But the truth is that an illiterate mind can even do the worse, typical of a stupendously wealthy second republic politician. At the heels of endless students’ demonstrations threatening the peace of the country then in the 80s, a team of journalists had approached him in his posh mansion to proffer solutions to raging upheavals. He was fielding questions on many contemporary issues amongst which was the turmoil occasioned by the endless students’ unrest then. Our renowned politician was asked: “Sir, of recent till now, there seems to be no love lost between the Nigerian students and the government. As an experienced politician who has seen it all since the first republic, how do you think the country can stop the raging students’ unrest?” Our VIP politician adjusted his sitting posture, while the teeming national television audience was expecting the politician’s useful response. With the usual deceptive genial smile typical of the politicians, and unbridled confidence of someone who knows the right solutions he quipped: “Oh, you too can see why the country keeps witnessing students’ unrest all the time. But how can they rest? . . . I don’t think there is end to students’ unrest in Nigeria. They must move from their hostels to the lecture rooms. And from lecture room to the laboratory; then to the library and back to the hostel. How can they rest?” The bottom-line? Regardless of popularity and affluence, the level of understanding between a stark illiterate and the educated man is yawning! Education liberates the mind. It refines crude thoughts. Illiterate minds will demonstrate bestial conduct more than the educated mind. That perhaps explains why the 16th century English essayist Joseph Addison when emphasizing the importance of education wrote: “Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave.” Addison went on: “At home education is a friend; abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, and in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives grace and government to genius.” Then Addison becomes pungent: “Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, reasoning savage.” Hmm! Affluence without good education? . . . Vacuity!
I like Habeeb Okikiola, alias Portable; the ZaaZoo Zeh music crooner for being so objective in assessing himself. His popularity in the music entertainment scene is meteoric. Until perhaps about two years ago, the 29-year old youth was hardly known. But since his one or two releases, he has become popular, not only for his brand of street music emblazoned in obscenities and vapid unfathomable street slangs and obtuse expressions, but also due to his frequent brawl with the law and common sense. A beautifully written article in Daily Post recently aptly entitled “One Hit, Many Controversies” revealed his queer conducts and frequent duels, even with his in-house colleagues barely few weeks after the release of his first album. Portable Omo-Olálomí was reportedly engaged in tantrums with one of his dancers, Pascal Odinaka, alias Poco Lee whom he had accused of swindling him of a certain sum of money sprayed on him while on a stage performance. Portable claimed only $600 was released to him out of $3,000 purportedly given him. No sooner the quarrel broke out on that subject than the Zah Zoo Zey crooner accused Poco Lee of hijacking the track which he claimed belonged to him. The album lyrics which have since been trending on the street goes forth: “Ara Adugbo, Zeh Tuntun ti de o, Zeh; Zazu . . . Ó fo létí, Zeh; Oye ke ti ma gbo, Zeh; Portable; Baddo gbemi tan; gbayi; (Giddem!); Pepe Sneh, Zeh; Many Many Wéré wànlé, Zeh; Ah, repete, Zeh; Unholy, Zeh; Baddo Lee, Zeh. . .” and behind was the heavy staccato of percussive beats.
The back-up audiovisuals show uncoordinated and weird responsorial dance step by a vivacious and excited crowd typical of a drunk and tipsy youths struggling to regain balance and perhaps lucid hours. I have, for a long time now, struggled hard but all in vain to really comprehend the message, perhaps to see if I could gain one lesson or the other. The popular track goes on with the merry jangling of the percussion and ululation in chorus format behind: “. . . P-Prime gbemidele, Zeh” Ah babeje, zeh; Asarailu hit bam, zeh; Mofos cannot keep up, Zeh; Bitch i be going nonstop, Zeh; Hmm Zazu; Che, Hacker, Ika, zeh; tesoju zeh; tesoju bi ti alagba, zeh; Gazaa, zeh; Ejeloju bi t’Abacha. Zeh; Run ju pa, zeh; Leju pa, zeh; Ma r’erin, zeh Kala, zeh; Daju, zeh; Wuwa Ika, zeh” I could only decipher few words, albeit frightening viz: “He slap him . . . Mad men at home. Plenty . . . Spoil the place . . .Hacker . . . Imprint on the face like the elderly . . . Bloodshot eyes like Abacha . . . Squeeze your face . . . Don’t laugh . . . Be callous . . . Be wicked etc.” But is Portable to blame? No. He plays his insipid lyrics. Nigerians are dancing on the streets! Portable must live. He must eke out living. He must feed. The electronic media and the DJs, on the other hand, in a bid to make money are playing all manners of music; to the delight of the innocent kids and undiscerning youths, but to the detriment of our fast decadent society. The event centers on the other hand want crowd patronage and innocent children to be entertained. So they invite “popular artistes that have blown” - as the cliché often goes. But where is our indigenous edifying music and the artistes? After all our music is part of our culture. Oh, I can hear you say our indigenous artistes play “old-school music”. Yes? But isn’t our society now sinking more and more in moral debauchery, social malaise and turbulence with our “new-school” foreign and esoteric ideas and practices? – half-nakedness in public; sagging; gutter-level slangs; bestial and tout-like conducts; disrespect for the elders; get-rich-quick mentality etc.
The ZahZoo Zey crooner after his quarrel with Poco Lee - his hypeman, also had a beef with his friend and disc-jokey, alias DJ Chicken whom he accused of sending text messages to his wife; and which culminated in Portable been charged for assault. The Ogun State Police command on June 20, 2022 subsequently gave him 48 hours to present himself at the nearest police station or be arrested. He reportedly showed up at the police station about ten days later with his father and was released on bail. His friend Taoreed Kògbagídí was reported to have become annoyed and reclaimed the apartment he provided for him. The dust on this hadn’t settled when Portable ZaZoo Zey Omo-Olalomi was alleged to have boasted that he was the founder of the dreaded “One Million Boys” and “Ajah Boys” in Lagos State. He had a little beef with another colleague artiste named Small Doctor. Now, he is again in the eyes of the law for refusing police arrest who visited his bar recently for an undisclosed offense during which Portable shouting at the top of his voice, adding that he could not be arrested being a “Superstar” helping the government, and indeed recently worked for a certain political party at the election. Thus, he was right to have boasted of being “omo-ìjoba” – government child. And truly the government has many children. A derelict system that doesn’t provide for her needy youths breed them all.
Portable – a creation of the Nigerian decrepit and derelict society who is perceptive enough to identify himself and helped to define his true identity and his queer person and personality can’t be blamed much. It was he who even identified himself as the “problem” of a decrepit society that, just like an in-discretionary father, failed to care for his children. Okiki alias Portable was downright right to have identified and re-christened himself “idaamu adugbo”, (id est: the problem of the neighborhood). I like him for being blunt. Portable also was quick enough even before anybody could accuse him of being a liability. He had urgently called himself “government liability”. Yes. Nigeria had failed since her independence to show deep concern for the needs or her children. As such a government that fails to provide for the needs of the people it governs must be prepared to bear the burdens of her “liabilities” in terms of social malaise and unrest. The northern part of the country derelicted for decades to give thorough education to the young minds at the impressionable ages. The alternative now is to bear the humongous burden and crass liability of festering alumajirism, brigandage, vandalism, and social disorder decades after their dereliction of duties. Nigeria had made over $600bn from crude oil since 1960. Yet the per capita income of average Nigerian is less than $30 per month, viz less than $1 per day. No feasible infrastructure to support self-employment. A nation or society reaps what it sows. Some of the factors that impact on the behavior of man include education and his environment. Every action of man emanates from the mind. Human behavior is a product of what he listens to, see or experience in his environment. Youths in Nigeria are citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria aged 18–29 years according to the new-youth policy of 2019. However, the African youth’s charter recognizes them as people between the age of 15 and 35. Nigeria is a nation with incredibly high rate of youth’s unemployment giving rise to all manners of social vices like money laundering, often referred to as Yahoo-Yahoo, pick-pocketing, robbery, cultism etc. Between 1991 up to 2021 the youth’s unemployment rate in Nigeria was reportedly 19.61%. This suggests that for every five youths on the street then, one was unemployed. And the dismal situation has not improved ever since but getting worse. Nigerian youths have also been eye witnesses to the permissive nature of our system which over the years had been administered under the “cobweb law syndrome” where evil conducts are hardly punished while offenders are handled with kid gloves depending on who an offender is or his status. In the feature “NIGERIA: A Slumbering Giant @ 62 and Her Macabre Dance on Perambulator” (See Ohio Wesleyan University Press, October 1, 2022), I explained what I meant thus: “Before any nation can grow at all, it must put law and order in place to be respected by all regardless of status or calling. Nigeria is yet to do that even at 62. It still remains a nation in lamentation under the crushing effect of her “cob-web laws” where the rich offends the law and passes through the security cobwebs like big birds unhurt; but the poor commits lesser infraction and gets caught in the cobweb like small flies.”The affluent and powerful politicians, who run afoul of the law often under the camaraderie cloak, get freedom with a grant of presidential pardon or amnesty. Most Nigerian youths have become idle hands which often become devils workshop, and only engage in all manners of unwholesome activities under the influence of drugs and narcotics. Since the system has not much concern for their welfare, they consequently engage in drunkenness ostensibly and erroneously to stem depression.
Our modern-day idle youths often enjoy night crawling and revelries at social events and parties, engaging in nocturnal acts and unholy conducts with opposite sex; the harmful practices which were held in strict abhorrence in the good past. In this era, the antithesis is that parents now kowtow and respect the views of their self-opinionated and presumptuous children – a grand departure from rigid puritanical discipline of the past years. Having sunk social media and Google lectures hook line and sinker, the strict discipline of children is now erroneously deemed “child abuse.” Teachers have been reportedly beaten by students and in most cases assaulted in cahoots with their irate parents for administering discipline on their erring children. The effect is that even the school system has become so permissive to all manners of indiscipline of the modern day youths; while reading culture about discipline and hitherto esteemed African values have become waned. The modern-day incorrigible youths listen and act the insipid and vapid, mundane messages of the music that is now common on the airwaves for which most electronic media stations are complicit.
Though, I am not pretending to be a learned lawyer. In fact, I am not learned at all. But I am aware that the“ratio-decidendi” advanced by Lord Justice L.J. Bowen in Edginton v Fitzmaurice case that “the state of a man’s mind is as much a fact as the state of his digestion” connotes that a man’s action and his general behaviors are as good or as bad as the state of his mind. In other words, a man’s conducts are a product of his inner thoughts. Thus, a musical audience that feeds their minds with bad messages may not be expected to act reasonably or wholesomely. Music is so ubiquitous with pervasive influence especially on the youths conducts. So a man acts based on emotional communication processed by his right hemisphere of the brain. This includes music which impacts on our actions; while the left hemisphere processes languages and speech according Dichotic Test and study in psycholinguistic foundation of communication.
Habeeb Okikiola alias Portable is no doubt a street name in music. I hesitate to say household name. But what really is ideal music? If music is the art of organizing sound, voice and instruments in a harmonious way to appeal to auditory nerves, then it suggests that good music must have meaningful messages to achieve needed response from the audience, either to correct some imbalance in the society, pass important messages to the audience; appeal to their emotions viz: like somber elegies, dirges, descriptive names etc. Music, a communication medium is powerful enough to advocate for a social reform. Consequently, can we say any music that does not satisfy any of such canons is really a good music? Can any piece of music conveying obscure and obscene words, with no reasonable messages to elicit needed response be classified as good and edifying music? In “Of Dancing Spree and Somersault” (National-Life, Nov. 7, 2009), This writer explained how our modern-day mothers are complicit in discouraging their innocent children to jettison their indigenous languages in favor of foreign ones, discouraging local dress culture, disrespect for greeting cultures, embracing foreign accents and intonations to sound British etc. Music, languages, dressing mode, habits, norms and mores etc, are some of the cultural identities of a people in a geographically define location. But in a society well grounded in “omoluúàbí” cultural values, norms, mores etc. what kind of messages do the lyrical contents of some of our modern-day musicians convey, especially to the youths in a society that abhors and preaches against indecorous behaviors? I make bold to say that Nigeria with her multi-ethnic and diverse cultures has their own varied genre of music, dramas, soap-operas, entertainments, etc that preach decent values and noble practices. But in an attempt to westernize almost our practices, our values have been swept away unconsciously. But the truth is that any society that neglects her esteemed values in favour of foreign practices is doomed for total extinction. In the feature, “A FUSION & EXPLORATION FOR VALUES SYSTEM REVIVAL: Beauty of Henrisol Entertainments Ltd. & LOTO Productions Collabo” I alluded to the Ghanaian Missionary James Kwegyir Aggrey Achimota’s aphoristic thought who wrote: “I am proud of my colour. Whosoever is not proud of his colour is not fit to live.”
Our hypocritical system has over the years bred many “Portables” - an imagery of the void Nigeria needs to fill in our abandoned youths. Many are yet to come. Our government should not just keep condemning the social vices they indirectly breed but also promote on daily basis. Our social system should not indirectly encourage obscenities and ignoble conducts; and in another breath hypocritically hold them in abhorrence? During banquets and social activities in government State Houses, they hire the services of “popular artistes who have blown”, and they often play obscenities, vapid and insipid lyrics to entertain innocent youths with their feeble and impressionable minds; whilst the VIP hosts grin excitedly and ignominiously dance with them. Are the media stations applying the “gate-keeping concept” to ensure the messages and music they reel out on air in the garb of information and entertainment wholesome and edifying? Don’t their so-called DJs prefer more the vapid and insipid music of artistes “that have blown”, while often ignoring well-blended didactic music of upcoming artistes that are capable of impacting the sensibility of the audience and addressing our ethos and shortcomings? If a man is what he listens to, what do we expect of a nation that promotes obscenities on air waive, billboards, televisions and magazines? Where is our reading culture to gain useful knowledge and become better citizens to our beleaguered society? Do we encourage our children to read only edifying information on the social media viz, the facebook, instagram, twitters, linked-in etc.; or we continue grinning at polluting and corrupting obscene bum-bum and breast pictures? In “OUR COPY & PASTE GENERATION OF YOUTHS & Dearth of Future Soyinkas (See Ohio Wesleyan University Press, USA, July 16, 2020) I wrote: “Our modern-day youths no longer see reasons to read. Many students no longer see wisdom in buying books. For class tests, they simply Google and provide similar answers verbatim! They glorify pictures and videos! They are apathetic and allergic to wide reading! But they are hysterical at mere photographs and video footages! They grin excitedly at entertainment motion pictures and waste prime hours on them.” How can a society glorify what should be chastised, earn honour and become recognized in the comity of nations? How can a people embrace what should be disgraced and expect the grace to move forward like other nations that distinguished pastime from core issues?
Hmm! . . . We may continue to pontificate on a better future for our children and Nigerian society. Good. We may pray and fast endlessly for the good of our country. Fine. But the truth is this: The great future a nation refuses to embrace and work towards may never come. The children a nation breed today will define her tomorrow. Verbum Satis Sapienti
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*Tunji Ajayi, a creative writer, author and documentary producer writes from Lagos, Nigeria. (+2348162124412; +2348033203115)
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